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Dawr

The Dawr is a very important technique in Abu Mashar historic astrology. “Dawr” means “time” or “period”, and is a technique used in mundane astrology similar to the more known firdar. Curiosly, although the dawr would be the “mighty firdar” (one of the four scales of mundane firdar), the word “firdar” is never used for this context.

Basically, the Dawr is made of 84 periods of 360 years. Each dawr of 360 years (in analogy with a solar year) is given a planet and a sign, beginning with Saturn with Aries. The following planets and signs are in the Chaldean order and the zodiac order, for instance:

Dawr 1 – Saturn with Aries

Dawr 2 – Jupiter with Taurus

Dawr 3 – Mars with Gemini

Dawr 4 – Sun with Cancer

etc

As we have 7 planets and 12 signs, 7×12 = 84 periods, completing all permutations between sign and planet. So, the complete Dawr is 360×84 = 30240 years.

Adam and the flood.

While modern astrologers are worried with the “slow” cycles of Pluto, the arabic historical astrology watched big cycles within cycles. As traditional astrologers know, the historical astrology of Abu Mashar and Mashallah is very concerned with combining astrology (specially the Great conjunctions) with important events, specially the birth of Jesus, the beginning of the arabic empire and the muslin prophets, the Flood, etc.

Mashallah has a very different system than the dawr (his “Thousands”). But according with Mashallah, the first dawr would be in the year -5324, and it was “the creation of Adam”. As the first dawr, this was ruled by Saturn with Aries.

Edited: As I was writing the blog, I was reading and copying the text from Abu Mashar, so many mistakes were made. The first correction was pointed out by Steven Birchfield, that the dawr is not a creation of Abu Mashar, and is found in Umar and others authors. It was not my intention to give this impression, I was just quoting the work that I had in my hands. The second mistake, is that I understood that the first dawr would be the creation of Adam (as it seemed logic), but if you do the calculation is obvious that it can´t be so. If the 64th dawr begins in -3380, then the first dawr (first of the current cycle anyway) would be in the year -26.060. As the dawr can repeat itself, if Abu Mashar was using one of the platonic “World Year” (which can last until 360 thousand years!) then this cycle could have began anywhere and I don´t know exactly what he considered the beginning. Burnett has a footnote that says that the Flood should be at the end of dawr 80, but he doesn´t explain his calculations, but apparently he is assuming the beginning of the World Year 180,000 years ago.

2.226 years later (in the year -3380) we had the conjunction indicating the flood, and the flood itself 279 years later (-3101). This would be the 64th dawr, ruled by Saturn with Cancer.

Finally, the third point discussed by Abu Mashar in his On Great Conjunctions is the conjunction indicating the religion of the Arabs, 3671 years later, around the year of +570 (I am using the calculations of Yamamoto and Burnett) . This conjunction happened in the 75th dawr (580 to 940), ruled by Venus with Gemini.

Venus, ruler of the arabs

As traditional astrologers know, there were several ways to give rulership of the religions, like Saturn for the jews, mercury for christians, etc. The Islam, as well as the arabic empire, usually get Venus. Abu Mashar, for instance, give mercury in capricorn for India, Jupiter in Cancer for Iraq, Venus in scorpio for the Arabs, etc.

The attribution of venus to arabs seem to annoy modern american astrologers, who only know Islam post 9/11, with the help of that known book “World History for astrologers”. But, as modern astrologers, by definition, will just do whatever they want, I just ask they stop trying to say that “Islam is ruled by mars”. Why use mars when we have a much better “rulership” by quiron, pluto or black moon Lillith!

Jokes aside, with the Dawr astrologers have a knowledge of why the rulership of venus was so important in the development of Islam, according to the astrology of Abu Mashar.

The beginnning of the religion of the arabs

The shift of the triplicity (from Aquarius to Scorpio) that showed the religion of the arabs was in the Aries Ingress of 571. Abu Mashar gives an ASC in Libra. I could only get an ASC in aquarius, but I am also not sure what is the location that one should use for this event, so I tried Baghdah, but I really am not sure.

“The qisma arrived from the beginning of Aries – in which it was at one of the conjunctions – at the time of one of the dawrs which we described – at the 20th degree of Pisces without <meeting> the rays of any of the planets <there>”

The qisma is the prorrogation of an important point by one degree for a year. It is not clear for me why Abu Mashar is progressing the first degree of Aries. He says that this was the ASC of the GC, but I think this is unlikely. Anyway, progressing 0 aries for 3950 years (from the conjunction indicating the flood until the year 571) gives us the 20th degree of Pisces.

“If we divide those years (3950) by 360 and take each dawr as a sign, and we begin to cast out from the governing sign which belonged to the dawr at the time indicating the Flood, i.e., Cancer, the dawr in the conjunction indicating the religion arrives at gemini. If we give one of the dawrs to each planet and we begin to cast out from the planet which belongs to the dawr of the conjunction indicating the religion, the number arrives at Venus. If we cast out from the ascendant of the conjunction which was at the beginning of Aries, one degree a year, it arrives at 20 degrees of Pisces in the conjunction indicating the religion. The planet predominating over the dawr and over the lord of the ascendant, and the lord of the sign of the conjunction, is Mars (…)”

In the paragraph above, Abu Mashar is telling us how to calculate the dawr of the beginning of the religion. As we already said, the Flood was in the dawr of Saturn in Cancer, so the religion was in the dawr of Venus and gemini (the GC itself was in Scorpio). Then he says to prorrogate the qisma from the beginning of Aries, as we already stated.

Why is mars the planet predominating over the dawr (which goes to venus?). Burnett believes that it is because venus (3 Aries) and mars (15 gemini) are in sextile, but is a very long sextile… I personally believe that is because mars is in gemini, which is the sign of the dawr. And, as Abu Mashar points out, Mars is the ruler of the GC, and is also the dispositor of the lord of the Ascendant.

Unfortunately, the estimation for the Flood doesn’t fit so well to another recognized bottleneck in human evolution, the Toba Catastrophe: It is recognized as one of the Earth’s largest known eruptions. The related catastrophe theory holds that this event plunged the planet into a 6-to-10-year volcanic winter and possibly an additional 1,000-year cooling episode. This change in temperature resulted in the world’s human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution.